The End Game: Remember to Design With the End in Mind

When you are in the business of designing buildings, it is often easy to forget what the end game of that business is. We are frequently under tight deadlines to deliver documents at some level of development, and the drawings and specifications for a project can begin to appear to us to be the final product of our efforts. In an environment where it is likely that others will do construction observation on our projects, it is especially true because we seldom get to see the final product of our design, making it easy to forget that a fully functional building is the end game of our business.

Actually, to be more specific, it is the people that occupy the building that are the true end game of our business. We are tasked with the amazing responsibility to design the places where people live, dine, shop, work, worship, and experience entertainment. Everything we do, in the end, is geared toward people. We provide appropriate lighting so people can see to do specific tasks. We provide heating and ventilation to make spaces comfortable for people. We design life safety systems that keep people safe. We design built environments that are aesthetically pleasing and functional so that the people who use them day in and day out have a pleasant experience. That is what our business is truly about.

We design built environments that are aesthetically pleasing and functional so that the people who use them day in and day out have a pleasant experience. That is what our business is truly about.

Some days, the work of engineering and designing feels like it’s nothing more than glorified data entry – and sometimes it may actually be. But the next time you feel that, remember the building you are designing is likely to be in use for many years by human beings. It’s more than a bunch of numbers and calculations. It is an environment that people will hopefully enjoy as they participate in the activities for which the building was designed.